Eliot Spitzer said he would accept the Working Families Party's nomination for governor but not necessarily the party's pet legislative proposal, to assess companies to pay for workers' health insurance.
“We must be extraordinarily careful before we impose upon small businesses in this state–and obviously how you define that is subject to dispute–a cost per person that would simply lead them to drop employees or to close up shop altogether,” Spitzer said. “I'm hesitant to take a step that would be injurious to small businesses, in particular.”
This is the man who won billions in settlements from Marsh & McLennan, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and other corporate giants? The one U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue accused of using the “most egregious and unacceptable form of intimidation” as attorney general to coerce companies into settling?
Little of the “Sheriff of Wall Street” is evident in Spitzer as the Democrat makes appearances in his campaign for governor. After being bad for many individual companies–or at least their executives and, initially, their shareholders–Spitzer is campaigning on the platform that he will be very good for business as New York's next governor.
“We're going to make this the most business-friendly state in the nation,” he said after getting the Democrats' nomination for governor.
And even before a group wary of business such as the Working Families Party, he talked more about reclaiming jobs New York has lost to places like Arizona than about the party's cherished “Fair Share for Health Care” proposal.
“I want that message out there for everybody: Get back here,” Spitzer told the party's convention June 3 at the Desmond Hotel & Convention Center in Colonie. “We need you. We want your jobs here. We want your kids here. We're going to build in this state by educating our children, by creating a climate that says to folks, 'We want you to create opportunity here.'”
Polling place
Polls from Siena College, Marist College and elsewhere show Spitzer with solid, double-digit leads over his Democratic opponent, Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi. They also show Spitzer easily defeating John Faso, the former state Assembly minority leader from Kinderhook, Columbia County. Faso is the only Republican running for governor following William Weld's withdrawal from the race June 6.
Angela Ledford, assistant professor of political science at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, said Spitzer is “walking a bit of a thin line” in talking up job development after making his reputation by going after big business. Ledford said Spitzer can pull it off, however, by stressing that his investigations were ultimately good for all businesses because he made more companies “play fair.”
“You can't run for dog catcher these days without being pro-business,” she said. “This notion that one party is more pro-business than another, that Republicans are more pro-business than Democrats, is ancient history.”
Richard Fox, chairman of the political science department at Union College in Schenectady, said the economics of running for governor in New York means that Spitzer needs friends in the business community.
“I heard him say he has to raise $40 million to run for governor,” Fox said. “You can't raise $40 million without support from business.”
Spitzer's television commercials share the theme of either Spitzer being the little guy taking on monied interests or of Spitzer fighting those interests on behalf of the little guy.
One series features tabloid headlines such as “Spitzer: Execs must pay” and ” 'Fearless' Spitzer: Sure to Rattle Wall Street.” Another features images of New Yorkers who Spitzer helped with such titles as “restored his back pay” and “protected his pension.”
Spitzer said the ads take a “very quiet, muted” approach and are not designed to inject anti-business “rhetoric” into the campaign.
“I think it's a fair statement of what we did, a statement of fact about what we did,” he said.
Spitzer called his relationships with most CEOs good, despite the way he pilloried former American International Group CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg and others as part of his probes of bid-rigging, fraud and other corrupt business practices on Wall Street. Spitzer continues to pursue a suit against former New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso and his $187.5 million compensation package.
“There are some who obviously disagree with some of what I've done,” Spitzer said. “I think if you speak to most, they will say what we were targeting was right. There were some serious problems that had to be dealt with, that the integrity of the capital markets and the business environment has to be protected.”
No 'insane' indictments
In fact, Spitzer said, he has judiciously pursued corporate targets. He has preferred to persuade rather than prosecute, to “come down like a ton of bricks” on wrongdoers but to back off when they admit their errors and correct them.
“In no case where there was a significant company … we said we wanted to drive the company out [of business],” he said. “Just the opposite. We have struggled to maintain companies. Whether it was Merrill–we could have indicted Merrill. It would have been insane. We've struggled to say, “Carve out the cancerous behavior. Get rid of it. And the company will thrive.'”
The Republican majority leader of the state Senate, Joseph Bruno of Brunswick, Rensselaer County, said the acceptance Spitzer perceives among business leaders for his enforcement activities is deceptive.
“People are scared to death and people will not make a peep because you're going to be the next target,” he said.
The Fair Share for Health Care bill would impose a $3-an-hour, per-employee assessment on companies employing 100 or more workers, with the money going into a special fund to pay for employees' health insurance. Companies providing coverage could deduct its cost from the assessments.
Dan Cantor, chairman of the Working Families Party, said at least 450,000 New Yorkers work for companies with 100 employees or more which do not provide health insurance.
While the Fair Share for Health Care bill had yet to get to the floor of either the state Senate or Assembly with two weeks to go in the regular 2006 session, Cantor said the party has forced serious discussion of the health insurance issue in Albany. The party's membership is heavily unionized, with leaders from the Communications Workers of America, Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union, the United Auto Workers and other labor organizations.
“We have set the stage,” Cantor said. “Eliot's got to do something next year.”